Re: Compassion of the Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))

Lawson English wrote:
Hollywood Lee wrote:
Lawson English wrote:
Hollywood Lee wrote:
Klaus Schmetterling wrote:
Tang Huyen a écrit :

When the sense of self goes away and
the sense of others goes away, one can feel peace, harmony,
serenity and grace, or whatever, and that is a posteriori, the
way we are built. But the positive social feelings, sympathy
and compassion and whatever, do not inherently arise.

An example please.

An awakened is *feeling* (your terminologie) peace, harmony, serenity and grace and is confronted with a situation in which some people suffer greatly (I leave it to your own imagination why that would be, after all everybody is best at creating their own suffering). How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? Apart from the reaction or attitude towards feelings, is there also some sort of hierachy of feelings, some being able to arise, others not?


I would think that any feeling *not* informed by cravings, egoistic conceits, and dogmatic views could arise. But it would seem harder to predict what *action* an awakened would take from there. That is, unless you argue that there is only one response an awakened could take to any situation (cue omniscience, choiceless action, etc.), and that we, as unawakeneds, can predict that action, then from our perspective and awakened could pretty much do what he or she chooses in the state of awakening.

Personally, I have no real trouble calling such nonclinging, unencumbered intention and action, whatever it is, compassionate, but to pretend I know what that really would mean in any particular situation seems lacking in modesty.

At the risk of even more abuse, I'll drag out my teacher's commentary on enlightenment. Enlightenment, in the first stage, is the condition of the nervous system where pure consciousness is not overshadowed by experience, both sensory and mental/emotional.

"Extreme" emotion, positive OR negative, would by definition, overshadow pure consciousness. However, negative emotions tend to be more extreme in this sense of the word than positive ones, so someone who is enlightened will not experience relatively moderate negative emotions simply due to the way his nervous system operates.

In other words, negative emotions are more stressful, in general, than positive ones are, and an enlightened person's nervous system disallows overly stressful reactions or they wouldn't really be enlightened.

For those looking for a physicalist interpretation of awakening, I suppose this is ok - though it seems odd for a belief system that is asserting many traditional Hindu concepts to get mired down in brain wave studies.

In any event, the focus on the "condition of the nervous systems" isn't as strong an intuition pump for me as is the idea of the "condition of my thinking process."

Do you believe that your thinking process isn't a reflection of your nervous system and the other way around?

Reflection? That wouldn't be the word I would use. I do think that the thinking process can be examined, in part, by looking at the various physical structures of the body - and that the physical structures of the body may even be influenced by our thinking. But whether thinking is reducible to the physical is something heavily debated by those in the field of consciousness studies. And nothing in my practice really turns on the results of that debate.
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Compassion of the Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))
    ... How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? ... Enlightenment, in the first stage, is the condition of the nervous system where pure consciousness is not overshadowed by experience, both sensory and mental/emotional. ... For those looking for a physicalist interpretation of awakening, I suppose this is ok - though it seems odd for a belief system that is asserting many traditional Hindu concepts to get mired down in brain wave studies. ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)
  • Re: Compassion of the Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))
    ... How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? ... Enlightenment, in the first stage, is the condition ... emotions simply due to the way his nervous system operates. ... For those looking for a physicalist interpretation of awakening, ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)
  • Re: Compassion of the Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))
    ... How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? ... Enlightenment, in the first stage, is the condition ... emotions simply due to the way his nervous system operates. ... For those looking for a physicalist interpretation of awakening, ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)
  • Re: Compassion of the stumping Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))
    ... serenity and grace and is confronted with a situation in which some ... How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? ... in the state of awakening. ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)
  • Re: Compassion of the Buddha (was Re: Just that (was Re: Introducing myself))
    ... How is it that some feelings can arise and others can't? ... That is, unless you argue that there is only one response an awakened could take to any situation, and that we, as unawakeneds, can predict that action, then from our perspective and awakened could pretty much do what he or she chooses in the state of awakening. ... Enlightenment, in the first stage, is the condition of the nervous system where pure consciousness is not overshadowed by experience, both sensory and mental/emotional. ... However, negative emotions tend to be more extreme in this sense of the word than positive ones, so someone who is enlightened will not experience relatively moderate negative emotions simply due to the way his nervous system operates. ...
    (talk.religion.buddhism)